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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The Washington Capitals had planned to practice at Prudential Center today on the day off between Games 3 and 4 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series against the Rangers, but coach Adam Oates decided to give the players the day off to “rest” and “recharge” instead.

It’s a page right out of the head coaching book of the Devils’ Pete DeBoer. Oates, of course, worked under DeBoer last season as an assistant coach for the Devils and if you watch the Capitals play you see a lot of similarities.

Oates made it no secret that he was adopting DeBoer’s style of play with the Capitals and that system is having similar success against the Rangers in this series – the Capitals lead 2-1 – to the success the Devils had against the Blueshirts in the last season’s Eastern Conference finals.

Oates said this series has been “very similar” to that one. It was even evident in the Caps’ 4-3 loss in Game 3 Monday as they created sustained pressure with their forecheck and worked down low against the Rangers’ defense and having their defensemen being active in the attack zone.

“It’s real similar to what New Jersey does,” Capitals center Matt Hendricks said. “We want to push the pace. We’re a skating hockey team. We have guys on this team that can skate and we want to push the pace as much as we can. And what I mean by that is not necessarily be making tic-tac-toe passing plays the whole time. It’s all about getting pucks in areas that force their D to have to work. Force their team to have to go back and get them or retrieve pucks, tire them out, wear them down and over the course of a 60-minute game – or now in the playoffs, who knows how long it can go? – it will end of benefiting us.”

The Capitals controlled play 5-on-5 for much of Monday night this way and their first two goals were typical of the kind of chances the system creates. On the first goal, the Capitals worked the puck down low and eventually got it back to John Erskine at the left point. Erskine swung it across to defenseman John Carlson for the right point shot that Nicklas Backstrom deflected past goaltender Henrik Lundqvist.

The second goal developed similarly with the Capitals creating sustained pressure down low and eventually feeding defenseman Mike Green, who snuck in from the point for the shot from the top of the right circle to tie the game at 2 with 2:41 left in the second period.

“We want to get the puck deep and work them down low,” Backstrom said. “That’s how we create chances. I think we’ve been doing a good job of that … so we’ve just got to keep doing it.”

The Capitals players even talk the same way as the Devils as the phrase “sticking to our system” has been repeated many of them throughout this series. The Capitals’ problem Monday was that they became undisciplined and put the Rangers on the power play six times in the open 27 minutes of the game. When they stayed out of the box, they were able to re-establish their game 5-on-5.

“We’ve done a good job of just sticking to what we know and keep playing the way we’re playing and wear teams down and over the course of the game whether we’re up or down, we’re going to get our chances,” Carlson said. “It’s a matter of burying them.”

The system is more aggressive than what the Capitals did under head coach Dale Hunter in the second half of last season. It not only helps the team offensively, but by keeping the puck in the other team’s end, it keeps pressure off the defense and the goaltender.

“It’s not crazy different, but we pick our spots and I think we pick our spots well,” Carlsson said. “The more zone time we can get for our offense (the better). It’s not just to take it easy on the defense, but we got so many skilled players, the more time we get down there, the better chances we have to score.”

In overtime of Game 2 on Saturday, it eventually led to Ryan McDonagh’s delay of game penalty and Green’s winning power-play goal. The Rangers could not get the puck out of their end, even after icing it and taking a timeout, and McDonagh ended up having a shift of 3:04 before his accidentally put the puck over the glass in the defensive zone.

“McDonagh was out there the entire time,” Hendricks said. “That’s part of it. It’s sustained pressure. We have a lot of guidelines, a lot of rules of where to put pucks and what to do with the puck in certain situations. It’s very detailed.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.